Ian McKellen’s advice for young gay actors is the last thing we’d expect from him
Ian McKellen came out as gay in 1988, a dangerous time for LGBTQ+ people.
Now, he thinks closeted gay people in the entertainment industry should be doing the same thing. He explained it all during a recent interview with British newspaper The Times.
“I have never met anybody who came out who regretted it,” he said. “I feel sorry for any famous person who feels they can’t come out. Being in the closet is silly—there’s no need for it. Don’t listen to your advisers, listen to your heart. Listen to your gay friends who know better. Come out. Get into the sunshine.”
He went on to talk about gay men in football, saying, “In women’s sport it’s not an issue. I would imagine young footballers are probably, like actors, getting very bad advice from agents who are worried about their own incomes. But the first Premier League footballer to come out will become the most famous footballer in the world, with all the agencies begging for his name on their products.”
Obviously, McKellen knows what he’s talking about. He’s always been open about the importance of coming out, and he paid the price in the past. If you go back far enough on his old blog, you can see that the initial response to a gay man playing Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings was not positive. “It was unsurprising that an uncensored Internet should recently criticize my casting as Gandalf in homophobic terms,” McKellen wrote in 2000. “Cranky anti-gay remarks in chat rooms remind me of verbal abuse in the playground—not that that didn’t hurt too.”
But Hollywood simply hasn’t evolved as much since 2000 as McKellen thinks. It’s damning but it’s true. And now there’s a major extra impediment: the rise of anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ+ hate under convicted felon Donald Trump and his henchman Elon Musk. You only have to look at the comments beneath the McKellen story on X to see appalling homophobic abuse, all of which is considered fine on the far-right cesspit that used to be Twitter.
Not everyone agrees that it’s safe for gay actors to come out
McKellen’s statement drew plenty of comment. Some thought that as a white, wealthy, British man, he was coming from a place of unchecked privilege. “Really cool but kinda misguided with how much coming out to the public can severely damage your career in the eyes of a certain half of the American public, one which all the rich executives seem to be leaning towards,” wrote one user on Bluesky. “I get his point, but he sounds privileged,” said another person, prompting comments about whether or not a gay man who came out in the ’80s could ever be said to be truly “privileged.”
Likewise, people had thoughts over on Reddit’s r/entertainment. “Ian is the GOAT, but I feel like he’s so respected that he could come out as a vampire and 99% of people would still love him,” wrote a Redditor. “On the other hand, I think most gay actors (and gay people in general) don’t feel safe enough to come out because someone would surely try to make their lives worse.”
That’s the problem that McKellen’s skipped over: there are just too many people around at the moment who would attempt to make a famous person’s life a misery if they came out. Unfortunately, this is Trump’s America, and MAGAism has spread to other corners of the world as well. It’s galling, but there’s nothing “silly” about remaining in the closet—for some, it’s just self-preservation.
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